Chapter Text
Subject: RE: News Intern?
Good afternoon,
We have no students interning with us at this time.
However, we would be more than happy to set up a time to meet if you would be willing to provide a statement on…
The words on the computer screen blur together as your heart stutters in your chest and your stomach drops. You just barely manage to squeak out a shaky breath, your eyes pinned to the first sentence of the email. Your hand rises to cover your mouth and you lean against the edge of your desk as your entire body is overcome with an abrupt weakness.
A desperate part of your mind tries to come up with a less sinister, alternative explanation for the “intern” almost immediately, just as you had done when the incident initially occurred. You try to tell yourself that maybe he was a stupid university student trying to get a good grade on an assignment or someone from one of those illegitimate “news” accounts on social media hungry for an exclusive comment– anything that isn’t the most logical explanation for what’s actually going on.
The building is on fire– and you can’t help but wonder how long the flames have been festering. Was it since that evening when someone had tried to open your front door? Or was it the broken window latch? How much more has been going on that you’ve simply been too busy to notice?
Have they been inside your apartment?
You want to cry, but you’re frozen with so much shock that you can’t even blink. The world around you spins to a nauseating degree as you try to come up with a plan of what the fuck you’re going to do.
There’s no point in going to the police– you know better than most that the evidence is circumstantial right now and that the police wouldn’t even consider elevating patrols around your apartment much less launching an actual investigation. They’d make the same kinds of excuses that you’re trying to make right now, and until something substantial like a break-in or assault occurs, there’s no point in bothering to file a report.
But where else do you go? You have nobody in this city– being a junior prosecutor means that your work-life balance is non-existent and you subsequently have no time for maintaining friendships outside of being cordial with your coworkers. There’s no one in your life who you’d be able to confide in without them turning on their heels and running away as fast as they possibly could. Nobody wants to get involved with a possible stalker– especially if said stalker has potential ties to one of the largest villain organizations in the country.
A resigned terror seizes you with a suffocating grip, your mind running faster than you can keep up with. Even if you made a report and it was taken seriously, the moment Infinition becomes implicated in the investigation is the moment your supervisors take you off of this file; and with no time left for another prosecutor to take over, the entire case would be withdrawn. A part of you thinks that’s exactly what Infinition’s goal is– to scare you enough that you run to the authorities and their leaders walk free on a legal technicality.
The minutes tick by as your thoughts run around in circles, hitting dead end after dead end. You have absolutely no idea what to do, but the sun is dipping below the horizon and as much as you’d like to, spending the night sleeping under your desk would not go over well with the higher-ups. Your coworkers had been tolerant of your stressful demeanor ever since you were assigned this godforsaken file, but even they had their limits in what was acceptable.
In the midst of your panic and with no conceivable way out of this, you find yourself walking home.
With each step, you curse yourself and wonder what the hell you’re doing. You internally scream at yourself to stop marching towards your very plausible demise, but your heels continue to click softly against the concrete as you push forward anyways.
You were no stranger to the many ways in which people reacted in situations of extreme stress; you’d seen thousands of different reactions, both in your career and in your work with the Commission. You’d sat in court and listened to defense lawyers tear victims apart in cross-examination, grill them on why they went back to their perpetrators or why they returned home when they could’ve gone anywhere else. Your coworkers had sometimes even expressed their own disbelief with the ways in which victims seemed to act against their own best interests. Even outside of reality, everyone loved to yell at horror movies and rag on the characters' questionable decisions. The typical, expected response of a victim was ingrained deeply into society, and deviations from that schema were automatically met with ridicule.
Why does someone continue on as if their safety isn’t in jeopardy? As reluctant as you were to admit it, you’d thought the same at many points in your life. Why would the victim enter their residence alone after seeing their front door wide open in the middle of the night? Why would someone “allow” themselves to be beckoned into a dark alley by a suspicious figure?
The reflexive answer most people would give to those questions is that the victims are foolish– that they should’ve known better. People try to claim that they’d respond differently– that they would do the right thing and wouldn’t fall victim so easily.
The simple reality is that the brain operates incredibly illogically under extreme stress, and nobody ever assumes that tragedy will befall them until it does– violently. Even now as you stumble home, there’s a part of you that thinks this is all just a misunderstanding– that something as fantastical as being stalked by an infamous criminal organization just couldn’t happen to someone as unassuming as you.
More nuanced takes on victim responses often use the metaphor of a frog in boiling water; threats to safety escalate in barely perceivable increments that keep the victim from realizing how dire their circumstances truly are until it’s too late. By the time the victim realizes something is wrong, they’re already boiling alive. It’s an explanation that you often use in court to explain why someone may have gone back to their abuser if the defense is trying to paint the complainant as lacking credibility.
What people often neglect to mention is the concept of tonic immobility. They’ll learn about it in animals– a possum slowing its heart rate and going limp or a fawn collapsing into catatonia amidst the tall grass– but the assumption is that humans have evolved past “playing dead”. An expert witness you’d called for a trial years ago had pushed back against the notion, discussed how repeated trauma shuts down the higher spheres of the brain in times of stress and pushes the victim back into the foundational, evolutionary portions of the mind focused solely on survival.
Maybe you’re just a frog in a pot of water, but as your heart beats steadily and you unlock your front door, you feel more than anything like a rabbit trapped firmly between the jaws of a predator. Your body may be moving, but you’re playing dead– clinging to your usual routine like nothing is amiss because you simply can’t face the reality that something is deeply, deeply wrong.
—
The week passes by quietly.
You pay your landlord to change the locks to your front door and put in a maintenance request for the broken window latch in your bathroom. You stay in the office as late as you possibly can, becoming well acquainted with the evening janitorial staff in the process. Rather than sleeping in your bed– which feels far too exposed now– you migrate into the spare bedroom which you’d converted into a home office when you first moved in, piling blankets and pillows into the closet and spending your sleepless nights in the stuffy, cramped darkness.
You do what you can, which is not much.
If you thought you were tired before, it’s nothing compared to now. The deepset bags underneath your eyes have practically cemented themselves permanently into your skin, and your appetite all but vanishes. You trudge to the office as early as is socially acceptable and isolate yourself in your cubicle, putting headphones in and fervently toiling over the Infinition file for hours on end. You don’t bother to take breaks anymore, keeping your mind as busy as possible in an attempt not to think about your current circumstances.
By the end of the week, you’ve reached out to all twenty-eight involved heroes to inform them of their incoming subpoenas and inquire about setting up a time to meet. Only three have gotten back to you so far, with a reminder set on your calendar to send out another round of emails early next week.
Throughout it all, you continue to avoid Bakugou. You cancel your usual Saturday meeting with him, sending a document of questions via email instead and telling yourself that Bakugou probably prefers this anyways, considering that he seems to hate your mere existence as it is. Your weekend feels hollow now that you don’t have a meeting to dread, but you opt to fill the emptiness with more preparation.
The sheer magnitude of the file descends on you with a renewed, suffocating weight– and you routinely find yourself doubting your abilities. When you’re not thinking about case law or how you’re going to get evidence admitted into court, you’re spiraling about your own skills and whether you’ll be able to secure a conviction. You bitterly tell yourself that if Infinition really is stalking you, then that at least means that you’re somewhat of a threat in their eyes– either that or a simple nuisance.
You’re barely present in your own body– wading through a haze of legal procedure for hours on end only to go back home and do the same until you pass out on the closet floor, curled into as tight of a ball as you can manage with a knife at your side. You wake from the smallest of noises and frequently find yourself crying out of frustration. The fact that nothing has occurred since the intern makes you feel as though you’re going insane– to the point that you’re almost begging for something to happen, just to confirm with yourself that your collapse is warranted.
Memories that you spent years burying resurface vividly, plaguing your dreams and fueling your doubts. You wonder how much of your slow destruction is a result of what’s actually happening, and how much of it is because of what you’ve relived. Your mind can only focus on the worst case scenarios; it’s all you’ve ever known.
Ten days since your last meeting with Bakugou, you’re attentively scrubbing through security footage– your face inches away from your computer monitor as you squint your eyes to make out the shapes of two figures slinking down the side of the building– when the sound of something slamming onto the wood of your desk startles you.
You jolt in your seat as a yelp escapes your throat and your head whips to the source of the sound. Someone has slammed their hand on your desk, your gaze trailing upwards to land on Bakugou.
“Bakugou?” you blurt, your eyes widening in a mixture of surprise and confusion as you take a deep breath in an attempt to calm the sudden spike in your heartrate. “What the hell?!”
Bakugou looks back at you with a smug expression, amusement flickering across his face. “Didn’t take you to be so jumpy–” he grins. It seems like he wants to say more, but as he examines you more closely, his brows knit together and his demeanour shifts. He leverages his weight against your desk so he can lean closer, and you find yourself instinctively scooting your chair backwards. “The fuck is wrong with you?” he scowls. “You look like you’ve been to war.”
You roll your eyes, carding your hand through your hair as you sigh. “Thanks, Bakugou,” you drawl. “It’s every woman’s dream to hear that.”
He scoffs but doesn’t say anything more, instead turning his attention to your cramped cubicle. “Geez, no wonder you prosecutors are all so bitchy,” he mumbles under his breath. “They’ve got you working in glorified prison cells. Does your desk always look like this?” he motions to the surface of your desk, which is barely visible due to the papers and sticky notes you have scattered all over the place.
“Well I wasn’t exactly expecting any visitors today,” you bite back in response.
You’re well aware of what your desk looks like, the pitiful stares you get from your colleagues whenever they walk by telling you more than enough. Normally, you’re much more organized with your cases, but with all that’s going on and the complete trainwreck of a file that you’re dealing with, you’re unfortunately stuck with the organized chaos that only you have an understanding of.
Bakugou steps around your desk and into your personal space, leaning directly over you to examine the corkboard hung on the wall of your cubicle to your right.
“What are all of these?” he asks, reaching forward to grab one of the letters pinned to the board.
You feel your face heat as you fight to get any words out. Bakugou’s eyebrows raise as he reads the letter– which you’re pretty sure is the one that repeatedly calls you a pissy bitch among other expletives.
“Those are– they’re letters I’ve gotten from the accused I’ve prosecuted,” you stammer out. “I’m not very popular with them.”
There are nearly a dozen letters pinned to your corkboard, all messily written and filled with so much rage their mere presence probably poisons the atmosphere of your quaint cubicle. You’d taken to collecting them in the beginning of your career because they brought you a fair amount of amusement and some of your other coworkers did the same. Lately, the sight of them just makes you feel like you’re being mocked. You’ve been meaning to take them down, but haven’t been able to will yourself to do so because in some twisted way it feels like admitting defeat.
“Jesus fuck,” Bakugou whistles lowly as he finishes reading the first letter and drops it back on your desk, leaning forward once again to examine the rest of the crumpled pieces of paper pinned to your corkboard.
“This one is uh– my favorite,” you say hesitantly, pointing towards the paper in the centre of the board written entirely using cut out letters from magazine scraps. “He really put a lot of time into it. Was pretty creative with the insults, too.”
Bakugou exhales in amusement, putting a hand on the armrest of your chair so that he can get lean in further to read some of the smaller print. He’s close enough that the ends of his unruly blonde hair brush against your face and you can smell him– a mixture of soot and something more earthy.
You swallow, doing your best to ignore the way your heart stutters in your chest as you lean as far back in your chair as you can. “What are you doing here anyways?” you ask, trying to draw his attention away from the letters. “We don’t have a meeting scheduled for today,” you add, not bothering to mention the fact that his volatile nature means you would never even think to have a meeting at the prosecution’s office. For a moment, you think that maybe he’s here to yell at you because you’ve cancelled this Saturday’s meeting, too.
Much to your relief, Bakugou straightens his back and takes a step away from you. “I’m not here for you, loser,” he sneers. “I’m meeting with another extra.”
You feel a mild embarrassment wash through you as you nod dumbly. Of course he probably had other files going on, especially considering that you’d offloaded most of your cases to your coworkers upon being handed the Infinition file.
“You’re not the only lawyer I’ve gotta deal with,” he continues, a smug look on his face. “My life doesn’t revolve around your file.”
The realization that Bakugou is parroting things you’ve said to him before back at you replaces any self-consciousness you had originally with a feeling of indignation. You narrow your eyes into a glare, doing your best to keep it together in a feeble bid to maintain your professionalism. You’re well aware of the fact that Bakugou’s mere presence in the office means that anybody nearby has stopped working to listen in on this conversation.
“I hope your meeting goes well,” you say simply, and if you didn’t know any better, you’d almost think that Bakugou looks disappointed– like he’d been hoping for a snarky response.
He rolls his eyes with a huff. “Whatever. Later, nerd,” he grumbles, turning on his heel to step out of your cubicle.
You watch as he stops in the middle of the aisle, his hands clenching into fists as he does his best not to make it abundantly clear that he has no idea where he’s supposed to be going.
Your lip quirks upwards in a faint amusement. You briefly consider sitting back and watching him bumble around the office like an idiot, but after a handful of seconds, your good nature wins out. “Which prosecutor are you supposed to be meeting with?” you ask casually.
Bakugou glares at you from over his shoulder. For a moment, you think he’s stubbornly going to refuse to answer. “Ishida,” he responds, a resentful tone to his voice.
“Two rows over, the cubicle closest to the window,” you supply, turning your attention back towards your computer screen just as Bakugou sets off down the aisle and disappears from your peripheral vision.
As annoying as Bakugou was, and as much as you hated to admit it, your brief interaction with him brings you a faint reprieve from all the catastrophic bullshit overwhelming you– enough that the tension in your shoulders wanes and you breathe a little easier.
—
You – 3:41pm
Going to have to cancel our meeting for this Saturday, too. I’ll send you some more questions via email.
Bakugou stares down at the message, his eye twitching as he tries not to lose his mind. A strange mix of anger and something he doesn’t want to name swirls in his chest as his jaw clenches. This is the third week in a row that you’ve cancelled on him, and he’s really starting to get fed up with this bullshit.
“Katsuki?! A little help here?” Kirishima calls over the sound of rubble crashing to the ground, prompting Bakugou to look up from his phone screen just in time to see Kirishima throw a villain through a window and narrowly dodge an attack from another.
With a scowl on his face, he shoves his phone into his pocket and lifts his arm to catch a villain trying to run towards Mina by the collar of his shirt. Bakugou yanks the man back, slamming him into the concrete hard enough that it splinters beneath him and the man is left gasping for air.
“Careful Bakubro!” Kaminari whistles as he walks by, dragging the limp body of a villain he’d electrocuted behind him. It takes everything Bakugou has not to launch an explosion his way in retaliation for continuing to use that god awful nickname. “Wouldn’t want any more demerits on your license!”
“Fuck off!” Bakugou snarls, your message still on his mind as he hoists the villain over his shoulder and follows after Kaminari, towards the villain containment van set up down the street.
You’re avoiding him, and you’re barely even trying to hide it. Ever since the last meeting, you’ve been off– emailing him like he’s just another hero and refusing to call much less show your face. Even when he’d stopped by your office last week, you’d struggled to make eye contact. You looked like shit too– even more exhausted than was customary.
“I can’t believe our Dynamight is more interested in his phone than a full scale villain attack,” Mina comments, her voice loud enough that it carries over the enraged yells of the villain she’s currently maneuvering around.
Bakugou rolls his eyes as he tosses the man into the back of the containment van, turning on his heel and scanning his surroundings to find his next sorry target. “You all need to shut up!”
“It’s because his favorite prosecutor keeps cancelling their meetings,” Kirishima supplies, cackling out a loud laugh as he dodges an explosion from Bakugou. “She’s giving him the cold shoulder.”
“Shut it– spiky!” Bakugou growls. “Stay out of my goddamn business!”
“Stop sharing your calendar with me, then,” Kirishima retorts, a noise of effort escaping him as he wrestles a villain to the ground. “You know how to do that, right?”
Mina gasps, her eyes lighting up at the mere prospect of some good gossip. “So that’s why Bakugou’s been even grumpier than normal lately!” she exclaims. “If you hurt that cutie, I’ll detain you right here with the rest of these guys!”
Kaminari yanks a villain backwards just as the poor man is about to take a full force explosion to the face from Bakugou. “Sending the prosecutors paid to deal with you running– what a ladies man!”
“I’m gonna kill you all!” Bakugou roars, his threats directed more so to his fellow heroes than they are to the villains surrounding them.
He shouldn’t care that you’re avoiding him– if anything, he should be relieved that he doesn’t have to deal with your nagging– but his mind is plagued with the memory of your smooth palm pressed against his cheek and the look of pure concern on your face as you’d held him upright. He thought that dropping by your cubicle in person to make fun of you would ease things, but now all he can think about is how utterly exhausted you looked, and he’s not supposed to give a shit about you at all in the first place.
Bakugou grits his teeth, rattling off another barrage of explosions to all but disintegrate the rubble falling from the buildings above.
And what is he supposed to do? Be the one that comes crawling back and demands that things go back to normal? He’s determined not to stoop down to that level– and he’s sure that eventually you’ll ask for another in person meeting, but– fuck– he’s not even supposed to want any in person meetings with you.
You’re nothing but a nuisance– or at least that’s what he’s trying to tell himself, but the feelings that swirl around in his chest are insistent, pulling at his heart and poisoning his thoughts. He shouldn’t give a shit about some stupid lawyer that’s in way over her head– you got yourself into this mess, and you can certainly get yourself out of it.
He tries to tell himself that you’re not worth the time– that one less meeting in his week is a good thing. Anger festers underneath his skin, his explosions burning much hotter than normal the more he thinks about your stupid face and the way you’re putting everything you have into this file at your own expense. He wonders if you’re eating– if you’re getting enough sleep or if you’re still having nightmares like the one you had in his office.
He wonders if this is tormenting you like it’s tormenting him.
—
Watching the elevator’s electronic display incrementally increase with each passing floor, the only thing you can think is that you really should’ve scheduled this meeting to take place somewhere else.
When you sent out emails to all of the heroes you’d be subpoenaing, Kirishima was unsurprisingly the first to respond. He was one of the few heroes who always made time for you, answering your emails almost instantly and moving his schedule around to better accommodate yours. In your haste to get a meeting booked and out of the way, you’d completely forgotten that Kirishima is a part of the Ground Zero Hero Agency; he’d even been hesitant when you’d offered to have the meeting at his office, but in your excitement you’d completely missed the uncertainty in his voice and insisted that you’d be more than happy to accommodate a meeting outside of the prosecution’s office to make things easier for him.
All you can do is hope and pray that Bakugou is out of the office– which isn’t asking for much. Considering the sheer number of files he has with the prosecution’s office, Bakugou would have to be on patrol almost constantly to be making as many arrests as he did. You tell yourself that in all likelihood, he is out on the streets, teetering the line between reasonable and excessive force.
As the elevator slowly comes to a stop and the doors slide open, you force yourself to take a deep breath and step forward. You try to reason that even if he is here, you’ll be okay– you have a job to do and as far as you’re concerned, he can take any grievances he may have with you and shove it.
You briskly approach the front desk and catch the attention of Shimizu, who gives you a bright smile when she sees you. Ever since you’d risked your career and absolutely lost it on Mineta, the meek woman had been much friendlier with you during your brief encounters at the front desk.
“Hi there!” she beams. “I’ll let Dynamight know that you’re here right away!”
Alarm flares through your body as you scramble to stop her. “I– I’m actually here to meet with Red Riot!” you respond, your voice louder than intended.
“Oh! Okay,” she nods, turning to her computer to clack away on the keyboard. “You can have a seat while you wait!”
You nod, turning on your heel to head towards the waiting area when the blur of a familiar silhouette in your peripheral stops you. Your body goes rigid, and seeing as it’s too late to pretend you didn’t see him at all, you begrudgingly lift your eyes to meet Bakugou’s gaze.
He’s standing in the doorway to his office, leaned against the frame as he regards you with indecipherable expression. His upper lip twitches like he’s about to scowl, but he holds himself together.
“Bakugou,” you force a curt nod, shifting your weight.
Bakugou remains silent, his red gaze pinned to you as you struggle to find something else to say to stave off the rapidly developing awkward silence between the two of you. Just as you both open your mouths to say something, Kirishima’s voice rings out.
“Hey! How have you been?”
You immediately look away from Bakugou, thanking whatever merciful god watches over you as you hurry over to Kirishima, plastering a soft smile on your face.
“I’m good!” you answer, hoping that the feigned enthusiasm in your voice is sufficient enough to convince Kirishima. You do your best not to wince as your palm trembles when you extend it to shake Kirishima’s hand. “How are you today?”
“Not too bad,” Kirishima answers, motioning for you to follow him as he sets off down the hall towards what you presume to be his office. You continue on with the small talk, the tension slowly leaving your body the further you get away from Bakugou.
As you disappear around the corner with Kirishima, the sound of Bakugou’s office door slamming shut rattles through the walls.
—
The meeting with Kirishima goes well, which you had largely expected it to. The hero was incredibly organized, all of his notes for the file laid out on his desk in advance of your arrival. You briefly go over what court will look like– the types of questions he can expect from defense and which pieces of evidence you will be having him authenticate. You’re done within an hour, nothing of particular concern coming up– a stark difference from how your meetings with Bakugou normally go. Kirishima walks you to the elevator and you thankfully don’t run into Bakugou again, your heartbeat refusing to cease in its rapid pounding until the elevator doors slide shut and you can no longer see the door to Bakugou’s office.
You’re in the middle of unlocking the door to your apartment when your phone buzzes in your pocket, the rhythm indicating that someone is calling you. You tut under your breath, briefly abandoning your key in the lock in favor of retrieving the device from your pocket. As much as you wish you could just ignore it, you need to make sure that it’s not a hero calling to set up a meeting with you as there’s no guarantee that they will return your call should you miss theirs.
When you see that it’s Bakugou calling, you briefly consider letting the call go to voicemail like he had so many times with you over the course of your career. You let the line ring for a few more seconds before you finally give in, arguing that you might as well get this over with now.
“Hello?” You say, wedging your phone between your ear and your shoulder to free up your hands. You try to turn your key to unlock the door, but it won’t budge.
“I’m not doing this email bullshit anymore,” Bakugou proclaims on the other end, not even bothering with pleasantries.
“Emails are necessary even for heroes,” you respond, holding back a curse as you fight with the key. What the hell was going on? Ever since you’d had the locks changed, you hadn’t been having to fight with your door anymore to get inside your apartment. “I don’t think that’s something you can escape.”
“You know what I mean, loser,” he grumbles in response. “No more emailing me with your stupid questions. You want your answers, you have to ask me in person.”
You sigh before you can stop yourself– the frustration with the lock distracting you. A part of you had known that Bakugou would inevitably get fed up with writing his answers down, but you had hoped that it would’ve taken him more time to get to that point.
“I’m very busy with other aspects of the file,” you mumble absently, your brows knitting together in concentration as you lean your weight into the door and continue to fumble with the key. “I’ve got to meet with the other heroes–”
“That’s bullshit,” Bakugou interrupts, his voice laced with disdain. “Stop being a coward.”
Finally, the lock clicks out of place and the door swings open. You let out a breath, stepping inside and closing the door behind you.
“Fine. We can try to figure out a time to meet in person,” you relent, crouching down to untie your shoes. “I can probably still make Saturday work–”
The light above flickers on– which you wouldn’t think anything of if it weren’t for the fact that both of your hands are occupied, one holding your phone and the other fighting with your laces. You pause, eyes widening as you look up and away from the ground.
It’s the intern. He’s standing less than a meter away, a sickly smile on his face as he steps away from the light switch on the wall. You freeze, just barely keeping a hold on your phone.
He’s in your apartment.
He’s not alone either, a bulky man whose skin is decorated with scaly patterns standing next to him. You don’t have much of an opportunity to examine the two any further, as your eyes immediately land on the gun that the intern has leveled at you, the barrel aimed directly at your head.
Your blood runs cold as you straighten your back, your grip on your phone tightening. The gun remains trained on you, following each of your movements.
“Oi– idiot!” Bakugou snarls through the call. You think that he must’ve been talking for quite some time, but you have no recollection of it in the slightest.
For a moment, you consider screaming for help– but if these two are really with Infinition, then their goals lie solely with freeing their leaders. If you don’t cooperate with them, then the easiest way to end your prosecution is to simply pull the trigger.
“I–I have to go. I’ll talk to you later– Dynamight,” you stammer out, lowering the phone from your ear and numbly ending the call, the sound of Bakugou’s protests abruptly ending.
The intern nods in approval, stepping forward to lessen the distance between you two as he extends his free hand. A strangled whimper escapes your throat as the cold metal of the gun presses against your forehead, your eyes glued to the man’s finger hovering over the trigger. Your entire body trembles as you give him your phone, the sound of your heart pounding in your ears nearly deafening.
How many times had you relived something like this?
You know how this ends. The thought replays over and over in your mind as the intern beckons you forward, jerking his gun in the direction of your couch as a silent command. Tears roll freely down your face as you stumble forward, your entire body on fire with adrenaline.
The man with the scales shoves you forward the moment you pass by him, and you just barely manage to catch yourself on the arm of the couch, a startled cry falling from your lips. Your arms shake beneath you, your legs threatening to give out altogether.
The fear in the pit of your chest is unlike anything you’ve ever felt before, yet simultaneously feels strangely familiar. It’s the same kind of terror that overcomes someone when they know they’re going to die– that there’s nothing they can do but beg for it to be quick. Of all the deaths you’d relived, this type of fear never felt like yours– always felt wrong when it would bubble up in your throat or pull you out of a nightmare screaming.
You shakily take a seat on the couch. The terror that courses through you feels like it’s always been there– like it’s been buried deep in your body since your very first breath. It belongs– slots against you so perfectly that you think you’re going to be sick. You distantly think that this kind of fear must exist in its own unique form in everyone, lying in wait.
You can no longer fall back on the reassurance that the terror doesn’t belong to you– that it’s from a memory you simply bear and nothing more.
This fear is yours.